Sunday, April 17, 2011

two poems by rachelle cruz

Scratching Jesus

It began with an innocent nickfrom the crown of thorns.Then our fingernails brimmed with blue paint and his invisible left eyelaid broken in my hand. In my parents' bedroom, the statue stood between two mirrors over false wooden drawers,his hands heavy with air.Every day, after school, a scratch from his callused feet, a comb of fingers over the grooves of his hair. My sister and I couldn't explain the rainbows of archeological dust on our cheeks.Even after our mother spanked us,(the Slipper or the Belt?)we swiped tiny curlsfrom the sacred heart, burning.We wanted to dig for the fire that made the heart beat.Our hands open to the beautyof ruin.

After Sylvia Sukop’s I forget myself (I forget you)

Walking to the office, a man forgets his leatherwatch, his valise and climbs inside a billboard,stapled with night sky and stars. He is tiredof losing. The stars are lined up, ready fortheir labor of dark, aching. There’s no moonhere to guide them, some romantic notion.They’ve punched their gas, their glint like nailsthrough a tin lightbox. Outside, the day is hotter,brighter, and the man notices his handsfor the first time. His body unknotting fromthe concrete, then nothing, nothing. Air.

Rachelle Cruz is from Hayward, California (in the Bay Area). She has taught creative writing, poetry and performance to young people in New York City, the Bay Area and Los Angeles. She hosts “The Blood-Jet Writing Hour” Radio Show on Blog Talk Radio. An Emerging Voices Fellow and a Kundiman Fellow, she is working towards her first collection of poems. Please check out her blog here.